Rachel Held Evans, Voice of the Wandering Evangelical, Dies at 37

[riversedge]

I wish I had known her. I do not identify with any Religion but She seems to be a kindred spirit.
The entire short article is worth the time to read IMHO.

Link to tweet

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/04/us/rachel-held-evans.html

Rachel Held Evans, Voice of the Wandering Evangelical, Dies at 37





By Elizabeth Dias and Sam Roberts

May 4, 2019


Rachel Held Evans, a best-selling author who challenged conservative Christianity and gave voice to a generation of wandering evangelicals wrestling with their faith, died on Saturday at a hospital in Nashville. She was 37.

Her husband, Daniel Evans, said in a statement on her website that the cause was extensive brain swelling. During treatment for an infection last month, Ms. Evans began experiencing brain seizures and had been placed in a medically induced coma.

“I keep hoping it’s a nightmare from which I’ll awake,” Mr. Evans said in a statement. “Rachel’s presence in this world was a gift to us all, and her work will long survive her.”

An Episcopalian, Ms. Evans left the evangelical church in 2014 because, she said, she was done trying to end the church’s culture wars and wanted to focus instead on building a new community among the church’s “refugees”: women who wanted to become ministers, gay Christians and “those who refuse to choose between their intellectual integrity and their faith.”

Ms. Evans’s spiritual journey and unique writing voice fostered a community of believers who yearned to seek God and challenge conservative Christian groups that they felt were often exclusionary.

Her congregation was online, and her Twitter feed became her church, a gathering place for thousands to question, find safety in their doubts and learn to believe in new ways.

Her work became the hub for a diaspora. She brought together once-disparate progressive, post-evangelical groups and hosted conferences to try to include nonwhite and sexual minorities, many of whom felt ostracized by the churches of their youth.

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“Whether you are a Christian or an atheist or an agnostic or a so-called ‘none,’ ” Ms. Evans wrote, “you know this truth deep in your bones: ‘Remember that you are dust and to dust you will return.’ ”

“Death is a part of life,” she added. “My prayer for you this season is that you make time to celebrate that reality, and to grieve that reality, and that you will know you are not alone.”


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A version of this article appears in print on May 5, 2019, on Page B9 of the New York edition with the headline: Rachel Held Evans, 37; Challenged Christian Culture. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

[larwdem]

1. only

only the good die young!

[jberryhill]

2. You know what her former fellow travelers think about this, right?

They’re grateful God stopped her before she could do any more damage.

[Blue_playwright]

3. Her last tweets were about missing Game of Thrones

Until she started having seizures, it seemed to be just annoying but something she’d deal with then heal.

Surreal that she’s gone.